Coasting across the asphalt on his mountain bike, Phil Miarmi picks up speed. Thwack. Thwack. His stick hits the ground, narrowly missing the street hockey ball. A few seconds later, a couple more cyclists charge at the red ball, mallets loaded with determination. Thwack. Thwack. The ball shoots through two orange construction site cones. Score! Boom! Miarmi is flat on his back. The 32-year-old cartographer has fallen hard for urban bike polo -- literally and figuratively. "I'm loving it," says the Upper East Sider on his first day at it. "So far, I'm sucking, but I'm loving it." Armed with long-handled mallets (second-hand ski poles jury-rigged to corrugated plastic tubes), customized bikes and nerve, adventurous cyclists are hitting city parks for pick-up games and formal competitions from Boston to Seattle. And make no mistake, this offshoot of the vintage high society lawn game is more black and blue than blueblood.

BRUISE CRUISE: Phil Miarmi of Manhattan wipes out during a bike polo match.

In Manhattan, they've claimed the court at Sara D. Roosevelt Park on the Lower East Side. Closer to hockey than its equestrian cousin, urban bike polo started on the West Coast in the bike messenger communities of Seattle and Portland, Ore., in the early 2000s. This version, also known as Little Beirut, has fewer rules than even bike polo on the grass. The history of straight-up cycle polo, played internationally today, stretches back to the 1890s.

Polo on wheels

Modern urban bike polo rules are few, simple and vary slightly from city to city. Shooters may use the flat side of the mallet to "shuffle" the ball, but not to score. Goals, which pass through orange cones about a bike's width apart, must be scored off the end of the mallet. If a player's foot touches the ground at any time during the game they have to "tap out" at an orange cone on the side of the court, but can return immediately after. "Like" contact -- body to body, mallet to mallet -- is allowed. Games typically last less than 15 minutes and are over after a team -- each has three players -- scores five times.

"Hitting it is pretty tough because you're moving and the ball is moving," says Miarmi, the newbie, who discovered the Lower East Side bike polo scene by riding by a few weeks ago. But even players who've been at it for years say bike polo is still challenging. "It's like being 6 all the time," says Jon Birdseye, 32, a photo retoucher for a commercial photography studio. "You still get that feeling you had when you were a little kid. If you can maintain that feeling, why not?" Many players prefer fixed-speed rides -- typical for messenger bikers -- while other pluck bikes from the trash. The NYC players, a lose bunch of mostly 20- and 30-somethings, don't answer to a leader. Within the group of 50, who play pick-up games Sunday and with pre-fab teams Thursday night are an architect, a luthier (maker of stringed instruments), graphic artists and food delivery cyclists. Many adopt anti-establishment aesthetics. "We all definitely have a different attitude about bicycling than most people. Regardless of what we do, it's how we get around," says Birdseye, who bikes from his Astoria, Queens, apartment across the 59th Street Bridge to work in Midtown Manhattan. The group is mostly men, but several women, who take good ribbings and bloody knees in stride, play too. On a recent afternoon one of the ladies was teased because her undies were showing as she peddled. "I watched for a long time and was just kind of a supporter -- then decided I wanted to do it," says Quinn Shamlian, 25, of South Park Slope, Brooklyn. The photo researcher for Discover magazine, who started cycling in college, claims she's "horribly uncoordinated," but now describes herself as a "decent" bike polo player. "There is a lot of crashing," says Shamlian, laughing and shedding an outer jacket on a frigid night, post-game. "That's what makes it fun. After a while if you land on the same knee five times, it starts to hurt. It's super fun."

Contact AWE senior writer Jodi Lee Reifer at reifer@siadvance.com.

BIKE CURIOUS?

Get in the NYC bike polo game Sundays from noon till dark. The free games are in "the pit" in Sara D. Roosevelt Park, on Broome Street between Chrystie and Forsyth streets on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Anybody able to ride a bike one handed and swing a mallet at the same time is welcome. Die-hards supply mallets to newbies. NYCbikepolo.com.